Quick Quiz: Name these locales:
What happens here, stays here.
Is OK.
The happiest place on earth.
That's right, my house 3 years ago. That would be the garage, corral in back, and the bed—ok, that's too easy. The kitchen, I'm a good boy.
No really, I am, ask Santa. Oh, don't try to tell me he's not real, how do you explain his visit to the happiest place on earth?
Huh…
The happiest place on earth. Well that certainly doesn't describe Marriageland. No, I'm not just being bitter. It's true. There are rainy days, you can't avoid them. Marriageland is great, but if you stay for a long time you risk a downpour. It happens. The strong people work through it. The strong people pack an umbrella.
Yesterday I sat in the church membership class drinking weak coffee. The pastor talked about the role of the church in terms of healing etc. He had some cool diagrams of the people of the world. It kind of looked like a golf ball with dimples. I think God planned him to be a pastor and not an artist. Still, he gets his point across. He's talking about the people and their expression of faith. Each dimple is a person on the big blue golf ball hurtling through space. We've taken a nasty dogleg into the woods, and God is coming after us with a club. At least that's what I thought he was talking about. 8am comes awfully early…
The pastor also explained the church as a marriage to all the married people in class. I'd visited Marriageland; I knew what he was talking about. In case I didn't, he turns to me and says, "I'll bet this is what happened in your marriage: You both stopped accepting blame, and started blaming each other. Then you stopped forgiving each other."
Holy Crap! I've been seeing a shrink for months and he hasn't gotten this far into my problems! That pig is just after my money. I'm gonna stop going. I don't think I can forgive him.
Ok, so great pastor Zoltan didn't say anything I didn't already know; it's kind of like saying, "I predict it's gonna rain, and you're gonna get wet." Some things are as obvious as song lyrics, even to me. Still, that doesn't make him any less correct.
"Yes, the ace of spades was my card! How did you do that?"
Don't get me wrong, I'm not making fun of the church or any of God's mysteries. It's just that the basic foundation of my marriage's collapse isn't one of them. That’s all Rob and MyUnwife Animatronics. Turn on the lights in the haunted mansion and all you see is a monorail meandering through a big warehouse. There's no magic there. It's the darkness that makes it spooky. It's the way Marriageland shadows loom much longer in directional light. Then there's that annoying song:
"It's all your fault after all. It's all your fault after all…"
It plays over and over until you just want to grab the kids and get out of the park. I didn't have any kids. It was just MyUnwife and I torturing ourselves for fun. You have to pay extra for that ride; it's strictly BYOBG. (bring your own ball gag).
Turn on the light though, and you see things as they really are. We stopped doing that. We stopped looking for things as they really were, and just let the ride carry us into darkness. Oh we intended well, but where do you find the road paved with good intentions? Yeah, we did that ride too.
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